I Climb Into the Cockpit of the 1000-MPH Car

Take a look inside the Bloodhound SSC, which will attempt to set the land speed record.

A few weeks ago, in a workshop the size of an airplane hangar, I stood next to Andy Green on the platform beside the Bloodhound SSC 1,000-mph car. Green—an RAF wing commander and the current land-speed record holder (763 mph)—invited me here to Bristol, England, to be the first journalist ever to enter the cockpit, and one of just a handful of civilians who would ever sit behind the wheel of the Bloodhound. I was excited—and also trying to figure out how to get my sizable body through the hatch, which is about 20 inches in diameter.

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"How about if I just swing one leg over the side and lower myself in?" I asked.

"That might be a bit uncomfortable," Green said. "It's quite a long way down. I'm afraid that your weight would be resting on a sensitive area."

That's the English gentleman's way of saying that I would crush my balls. I eventually managed to wriggle into the compartment, with an assist from Green. I felt self-conscious, to put it mildly. Two dozen other journalists and the Bloodhound build crew were watching, and video and still cameras were recording the moment.

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The Bloodhound project, which Popular Mechanics featured in a cover story in March, took a major step forward on Friday as the fully outfitted cockpit was revealed. "It's a fully modular subassembly," chief engineer Mark Chapman told PM. "Just this morning we were taking some final measurements and marking up the car's titanium skin so we can get the right fit for mating the unit to the car's upper structure."

Like the Bloodhound itself, the cockpit presents a high-tech blend of aviation, aerospace, and automotive design and specifications. Designed and handcrafted by U.K.-based composites company URT Group, whose innovations manager is a veteran of McLaren Automotive, the monocoque is tailored to fit Green, who flies fighter jets when he's not driving the world's fastest cars.

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The Bloodhound is scheduled to make a series of runs on the Hakskeen Pan, a dry lakebed in South Africa, over the next two years. Green will try to surpass 800 mph in 2015, and 1000 mph in 2016. He calls the likelihood of a crash "vanishingly unlikely." Regardless, he will be protected by a remarkably strong capsule. The shell consists of 13 layers at its thickest point, with five types of woven carbon fiber, honeycombed aluminum sheeting, and resin.

"If the car rolls at 700 mph, there would be a series of relatively small impacts, since there are no fixed obstacles on the course," Green says. "But if the wheels are on the ground, you are not going to have a crash. We've spent five years getting the aerodynamics right, so I'm quite confident the wheels will stay on the ground."

While making his runs for the record books, Green will follow a line painted on the ground while peering through an acrylic windscreen that's nearly an inch thick. That's twice as thick as a fighter jet's windscreen; it can withstand the impact of the impact of a 2-pound bird at 900 mph. (What happens to the bird is another matter.)

At that insane speed, any collision is a major worry. "A likely scenario is a rock being kicked up from the floor of the lakebed," Chapman says. The car would be going so fast that stone would be like a hot bullet, so ballistic armor and ice-water tanks are positioned behind the wheels, and the bottom of the monocoque is not only armored but also angled to deflect debris.

The car is powered by a rocket, made by the Norwegian defense contractor Nammo, and a Eurojet EJ200 turbofan. The jet-engine intake sits directly above and behind the cockpit. The canopy is designed to generate shockwaves that will slow the flow of air from 1,000 mph to 600 mph as it enters the intake. If air were to enter at the higher speed, it would damage the engine.

The instrument panels features digital as well as analog readouts. The central screen shows miles per hour and Mach speed, plus output levels of the jet and rocket. If all goes as planned, the turbofan will propel the car past the 500-mph mark, at which point Green will fire the rocket, which provides a 20-second burst of power. This will push the car through the so-called measured mile—where the top speed is recorded—in 3.6 seconds. Green will control the jet with a foot pedal and fire the rocket with buttons set into the titanium steering wheel.

When I sat in the cockpit, it was incomplete, but it possessed a Machine Age beauty. Panels painted flat-gray and outfitted with more than two dozen toggles flanked the steering wheel. But the most striking elements were the Rolex instruments. Each piece is about 6 inches in diameter and has a black face with illuminated markings. On the right is a chronograph with a built-in stopwatch. On the left is a speedometer marked at 100-mph increments, up to 1,100 mph. If the digital readouts were to fail, Green would rely on the chronograph to time the firing and cooling down of the jet. The speedometer—which operates via a dedicated GPS system—would help him apply the friction brakes at the correct speed, namely, about 200 mph.

The last point is key, because Green will be keen to stop the Bloodhound before it eats up all of the 10-mile track.